Chapters (48)
- also by patricia cornwell
- title page
- copyright
- dedication
- contents
- prologue
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- two nights later
- credits
“Maybe the killer assumed she wouldn’t look mummified,” Machado says. “Maybe he thought she wouldn’t look dehydrated after she was in the water for a while.”
“Mummified remains don’t reconstitute like freeze-dried fruit. You can’t add moisture back to a dead body.”
I open the bag, and the bottle is right on top of other bottles and cans and jars. It’s right there where the monster placed it.
“But would the average person know that a dried-out body wouldn’t rehydrate?” Machado asks.
The forty-ounce Steel Reserve 211 bottle is the same as the two empties by the recliner, each with a price sticker from a Shop Quik.
“I’m not going to do anything with this here,” I say to Machado, as I hold up the bottle in my gloved hands, turning it in sunlight shining through a window. “I see ridge detail, and I see blood.”
thirty-three
thirty-three
I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY A KILLER WHO HAS ELABORATE fantasies and premeditates and seems meticulous makes so little effort to hide evidence that matters. In fact, I’m baffled, I tell Benton.
“You’ve got to focus on his priorities,” he says, as he drives us through mid-Cambridge. “You have to get inside his head and know what he values. Neatness, tidiness, everything exactly the way he likes it. Restoring order after he kills. Showing he’s a nice guy, a decent guy, someone civilized. I’m suspicious the flowers in Peggy Stanton’s house were from him. When he returned her car and entered her house he left flowers to show what a sterling fellow he is.”
“Any luck finding a record of a delivery?”
“Not any of the florists in the area. It’s been checked.” He glances at his phone, and he’s been glancing at it a lot. “I think there was no card because there never was one, that he walked in with a spring arrangement like a thoughtful son stopping by to see his mother. It’s very important to this person that what he believes about himself is reasserted after he’s killed. A great guy. A gentleman. Someone capable of meaningful relationships.”
“What he did to Howard Roth wasn’t exactly gentlemanly, and he certainly didn’t leave him flowers.”
“Howard Roth had no value.” Benton glances at another text message, and I wonder if it is Douglas Burke who is writing to him every other minute. “He was an object no better than the trash he dug through, and the killer assumed you wouldn’t value him, either. He assumed it would be a case that wouldn’t merit your attention.”
“Me specifically?”